Tag: Costa Philippou

While we at CagePotato decided to take the day off yesterday to spend time with our children, the UFC injury plague was hard at work on January 1st, steady knockin’ fighters off of main cards. Here’s the latest casualty list…

- UFC welterweight Tarec Saffiedine has been forced to withdraw from his scheduled UFC Fight Night 60 main event against Matt Brown on February 14th due to a groin injury. The UFC will have to hustle to find a decent replacement opponent for Brown, because no other fight on the lineup screams “headliner.” We’re not trying to be a dick or anything, but when your event is so weak that a Tarec Saffiedine injury destroys it, maybe you deserve whatever happens to you?

Henderson and Alvarez will both be looking to bounce back from recent defeats. Henderson is coming off his first-round knockout loss to Rafael Dos Anjos at UFC Fight Night 49 in August, while Alvarez was out-pointed by Donald Cerrone in his Octagon debut at UFC 178.

The Herald is also reporting two more interesting bookings for the 1/18 card…

In case you missed the incredible (and somewhat unsettling) three-round smash-up between Matt Brown and Erick Silva at UFC Fight Night 40 on Saturday night, watch this quick recap of the action. Two quick takeaways: 1) Brown might be the toughest sumbitch in UFC history. 2) At the 0:47 mark, you will see the closest that MMA has ever come to a double-KO via body shots. I’m glad the fight turned out with a triumphant victory for the very deserving Immortal, but damn, that would have been awesome.

About midway through the Fight Night 35 main card, I headed to a local bar with some friends for trivia night, my intention being to halfheartedly watch the card to completion whilst shoveling down pull pork nachos and trying to figure out who the 14th President of the United States was without using the smartphone I don’t even have.

Amidst a crowd of heavily inebriated Bostonians, I attempted to get the bartender to change one of the 15 plasma screen televisions surrounding me to FOX Sports 1. She changed it to FOX, at the exact moment American Idol was starting, which drew some strange reactions from the bar patrons that in turn forced me to hang my head in shame until she made it back around. When she finally did, and after a brief back and forth about what FS1 exactly was, she informed me that “we don’t play fights here” before switching to CNN.

This intolerance left me cold inside, colder than any amount of nachos could ever hope to warm. But I tried, dammit. I really tried…

What does any of this have to do with the Fight Night 35 salaries? Nothing, I guess. I just thought it would interest you to know that MMA bias is still alive and rampant, even in some of the sport’s most gung-ho cities. Join us after the jump to see the saddening result of this intolerance.

“I’m looking at anyone in the middleweight division to get myself back into (title) position,” Rockhold said. “I already let it be known Bisping’s out there. A lot of people are calling him out, but Bisping went on national TV and told everybody he was the unofficial Strikeforce champion. He calls it a joke and this and that, but I say he’s got bad taste and he needs to pay for it.”

(Luke and Costa face off in front of the wax replica of Dana White that the UFC has been sending to non-essential events. No offense, guys. At least you’re not on Fight Pass. / Photo via Getty)

Look, what can we tell you about UFC Fight Night 35 that we haven’t already expressed via dog GIFs? Luke Rockhold and Costa Philippou are a pair of highly-regarded middleweights who are trying to avoid a two-fight losing streak. Supporting their main event is a worthwhile list of TUF vets (Brad Tavares, TJ Dillashaw, Cole Miller, Sam Sicilia), a former flyweight title challenger (John Moraga), and a fast-rising knockout artist named Yoel Romero. It’s on cable TV, and early enough to watch while you’re eating your salisbury steak. Take it or leave it.

Handling our liveblog of the “Rockhold vs. Philippou” FOX Sports 1 main card is Matt Kaplan, who will be sticking round-by-round results after the jump beginning at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, and if you’re watching along with us, join the conversation in the comments section.

All 24 fighters competing on tomorrow’s Fight Night: Rockhold vs. Philippou card made weight at today’s weigh-ins, which went down at the Arena at Gwinnett Center in Duluth, Georgia at 4 p.m. EST.

Although the event got off to a smooth start, things took a turn for the worse during the main event staredown. For seemingly no reason, Philippou suddenly decided to blind Rockhold with a Three Stooges-style double eye poke (a signature move of his), causing the final Strikeforce middleweight champion to stumble off stage and knock himself unconscious. Stepping in to fight Philippou on extremely short notice will be Mayhem Miller, who promised to “Force-feed that Cypriot his own ass and then drag his assless corpse to the local cineplex” before launching into a series of robot and Batman sounds. Should be a hell of a fight.

That’s a lie. None of that happened. The full weigh-in results for Fight Night 35: Rockhold Miller Lucky Patrick vs. Philippou are after the jump.

Tomorrow night, the UFC returns to Georgia to deliver an action-packed evening featuring a who’s who of “Who’s that?” with Fight Night 35: Rockhold vs. Philippou. I’m kidding of course, because Fight Night 35 is at least attempting to make up for its lack of name power with a six-fight main card, and you know what they say about quantity over quality (it never fails!).

So as has become tradition with every great (or at least mediocre) fight card, it’s time to rank the Fight Night 35 main card fights according to our — and therefore, your — interest level. Let’s do this!

The only reason we ranked this fight last is due to the fact that a win won’t do much for either man other than secure their job for another fight. But don’t get us wrong, there’s plenty to watch for in this showdown between TUF alums. Cole Miller has dropped three out of his past five fights, but that didn’t stop him from calling out half the lightweight division (including “Colin Magoober”) after narrowly defeating Andy Ogle at Fight Night: Munoz vs. Machida last October. We expect him to go full heel against Sicilia, who recently saved his career and broke a two-fight skid by tearing through Godofredo Castro like a dingo through a baby at Fight Night 32. This one probably isn’t going the distance.

Rockhold and Philippou still rank among the better contenders in the UFC’s surging 185-pound division, but their last performances wouldn’t seem to qualify them for a UFC headlining spot, even on an irrelevant small-market Fight Night show. But hey, nobody’s forcing you to watch it, and if anything crazy happens, we’ll be sure to link to the GIF on our Facebook page. That’s the CagePotato Promise™.

Two other bouts — Cole Miller vs. Sam Sicilia and T.J. Dillashaw vs. Mike Easton — have also been reported for Fight Night 35, which marks the UFC’s first stop in Georgia since Jones vs. Evans in April 2012. The event is slated to air on FOX Sports 1.

Round-by-round results from the UFC 165 pay-per-view broadcast will be accumulating after the jump beginning at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT, courtesy of your old pal BG. Refresh the page every few minutes for all the latest, drop your thoughts into the comments section, and swing by our Twitter page tonight for additional observations and yuk-yuks from CagePotato staff writer Matt Saccaro. Now let’s have some fun.